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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

As I was reading “That’s A Wrap! Author Branding in a
Nutshell” by Carina Press Executive Editor Angela James in the December
2012 edition of RT Book Reviews,
I began wondering about the relationship of author branding with readers who
look to genre/subgenre first when making decisions about which books to read.

An author can brand all she wants but for readers who pick
books according to genre first (like me) the branding may very well be a non
factor. Unless, that is, one defines the very act of writing a sci-fi romance a type of
branding (Angela James defines brand as a “promise to readers”).

This issue comes into play with science fiction romance when
authors who write in this subgenre have to decide how to brand themselves. I
regularly encounter the umbrella genre tags included in the brand. Meaning
authors brand themselves as SF *or* romance authors even if what they write are
hybrid stories with elements of both. Then readers like me go and ferret out
the specific SF and romance elements and blog about them like crazy no matter
what the author’s stated brand is.

Which I’m sure must drive some authors nuts, especially if
they’ve worked hard to build a specific brand or define their work a certain way. Then there’s the fact that the
romance angle is seen as less valid by some people. Do authors of SFR risk
branding themselves with “romance” or do they sidestep the issue and stick with
the generally safer “SF” description? No matter which brand an author chooses, however, sometimes it must seem like they can't win.

Case in point: author Margaret Atwood. Many
consider some of her books to be squarely science fiction. But she has insisted
otherwise:

Atwood was at one time offended at the suggestion that The
Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake were science fiction, insisting to
The
Guardian that they were speculative fiction instead: "Science
fiction has monsters and spaceships; speculative fiction could really
happen." She told the Book of the Month Club: "Oryx and
Crake is a speculative fiction, not a science fiction proper. It contains
no intergalactic space travel, no teleportation, no Martians." On BBC
Breakfast she explained that science fiction, as opposed to what she
herself wrote, was "talking squids in outer space." The latter phrase
particularly rankled advocates of science fiction and frequently
recurs when her writing is discussed.[9]

I mean, like wow, she won the Arthur C. Clarke award in 1987
for THE HANDMAID’S TALE—an SF award for a story she at one time insisted wasn’t
science fiction. Talk about an author-reader difference between genre
interpretations!

So I would ask authors of sci-fi romance this question:
Would you rather have complete control over your brand or would you rather increase
the chances of people talking about your books even if they posit their own
definitions about what you write? The reason I ask is because no matter how
hard one works at branding, as the Margaret Atwood example shows, one’s control
over it only goes so far.

Readers are going to define stories according to their
individual tastes no matter how authors brand themselves (and I should point
out that Ms. James wrote about how brand is not always related to genre so much
as an author’s “…voice, quality, and storytelling in each book.” Pg. 30).

Sometimes a reader’s definition matches the author’s brand
but other times there’s only a partial match. Debating how readers define your stories implies that their
interpretations are invalid. Distancing yourself from one genre label or
another (in this case, SF or romance) only makes readers question your investment
in them.

All of this doesn’t mean authors should throw
branding efforts out the window; rather, it would be fruitful to explore how
branding can be adapted to connect with readers who choose books according to
genre or specific hybrids.

How can you best maximize the leverage of your SF-Romance
hybrids? Yes, you may have branded yourself an SF author but beyond that simple
classification how well does it really define what you write? For example, how
will romance readers discover the romance thread(s) in your book(s)? How can you best engage in a dialogue with SF readers about the advantages of character-driven stories?

My suggestion: embrace how readers interpret and label your stories. Tailor your marketing efforts with that factor in mind. After
all, once your work is published, all your stories are belong to us.

Joyfully yours,

Heather

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About Me: Heather travels the sea of stars for news about science fiction romance. She's also an author in the genre. To get in touch, you can email her, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

About Me

Heather’s debut sci-fi romance novel, Once Upon a Time in Space, features the last living descendant of Christopher Columbus on a desperate quest to find a new world. Standing in his way is Raquel, the deadliest space pirate in the galaxy.